The Appeal of Modern Greek Drama and Its Future in the English-speaking World

“. . . Greek culture has lost the appeal it enjoyed after the Second World War and even during the Junta years. Although a pervasive trend, the diminished interest is most keenly noticeable in literature. Greek writing beyond Elytis hardly makes an imprint outside of Greece. While translations of East European, “Third World,” post-colonial, and in general non-Western authors receive wide attention and critical acclaim, the works of Greek postmodern novelists, poets, women writers, or memoirists remain virtually unknown. To be sure, those wishing to translate Greek fiction and poetry find few willing publishers. Even when available in translation, these works find a small audience. Undeniably the position of Greece in the contemporary cultural universe has shifted. While thirty years ago Greece was a compelling subject of critical interest, now it has been superseded by other cultures.”

—Gregory Jusdanis, Vassilis Lambropoulos, and Artemis Leontis, Whither the Neohellenic? A Conference-Workshop.

The conveners of the “Whither the Neohellenic?” workshop submitted the following premise to the participants: Interest in Greek culture—from the classical to the modern period—peaked in the English-speaking world in the mid-1970s, but it has been waning ever since. The conveners founded this premise on their observation of three symptoms: (1) the number of published translations of Greek books and their volume of sales have declined; (2) the number of published books about Greek culture and their marketability have decreased; (3) the overall attention to Greek affairs by the mass media has dropped. On the assumption that the above observations are correct, we were invited to investigate two difficult questions: (1) Why has international attention and investment in Greek cultural affairs plummeted? (2) What can be done to reinvigorate international attention and investment in Greek cultural affairs?

We can diagnose the problem if we identify those factors that have caused the decline of public interest, scholarly research, and monetary investment in Greek cultural affairs. We can prescribe a cure that might reinvigorate interest, research, and investment in Greek cultural affairs if we identify those factors that might have an international appeal. Of course, not all aspects of Greek culture are controlled by the same kind or number of factors. I have therefore limited my focus to one aspect of Greek culture, Greek drama; to one period, the modern period; and to one international language, English. For this reason, my contribution to this investigation will be restricted in the sense that my observations and conclusions about modern Greek drama may not be applicable to classical Greek drama, to other aspects of Greek culture, and/or to countries that are not part of the English-speaking world.

Let me begin by placing the first question in a theatrical context. Why has attention to and investment in Greek drama plummeted in the English-speaking world? In order to answer this question, I formed two hypotheses: (1) the number of published translations of modern Greek plays has declined, (2) the amount of published research about modern Greek drama has also declined. I then proceeded to collect data that would support or invalidate those two hypotheses. I am happy to report that both hypotheses were invalidated.

The number of published translations of modern Greek plays has increased since 1900. A total of 60 modern Greek plays were translated into English and were published during these 97 years of the twentieth century. Translation activity in the twentieth century was overwhelmingly greater than translation activity in the nineteenth century. I found only one modern Greek play (Nikolaos Piccolos’s The Death of Demosthenes) that was translated into English during the nineteenth century. It was rendered by Grigorios Paleologos and was published in Cambridge, England, in 1824.

In the twentieth century, the distribution of these translations shows an interesting pattern. Prior to 1950 only four English translations of modern Greek plays were published: Kostis Palamas’s Royal Blossom or Trisevgeni translated by Aristides Phoutrides and published in New Haven by the Yale University Press in 1923, and three Cretan plays—The Sacrifice of Abraham, Erophile, Gyparis translated by F. H. Marshall—published...